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Amendment 66 seeks to protect front-line waste operatives from assaults, via guidance. I lodged the two amendments in the group because changes could be made to the terms and conditions of waste operatives as a result of the bill. In case there are any changes as a result of bin fines or contamination inspections, I seek to ensure that ministers must get approval from trade unions and local authorities before implementing legislation to get waste operatives to inspect bins.

Clearly, our front-line staff are out there already and, under their current terms and conditions, they may on occasion, depending on the local authority, be required to engage in certain practices. However, based on our earlier discussions, it appears that there could be a significant change to work practices as a result of the bill. It is important that workplace safety and working conditions are to the fore when we consider the legislation, and that is what the amendments in the group are about.

Amendment 67 does not seek to change any reserved law. It just recognises that changes from the employer, which could be the local authority, need to be recognised. That is ultimately a result of the Scottish Government’s policy to change the terms and conditions of the front-line operatives. That is the key point. It is the Scottish Government—not the local authorities—that is seeking to change terms and conditions.

It is within the scope of what the Scottish Government has defined that I have suggested that trade unions should be involved. This has nothing to do with Westminster. Otherwise, the Scottish Government should remove all its amendments in relation to bin fines. I am just commenting on the pitch on which the Scottish Government has decided to play.

With that, I will not press amendment 66.

We should write to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care to highlight the petitioner’s submission and seek information on the criteria for determining clinical priorities; an explanation as to why chronic kidney disease is not already designated a clinical priority; and further detail on the Scottish Government’s decision not to increase the number of health strategies for individual conditions, including chronic kidney disease.

We should write to the Scottish Government to ask, in light of the consultation responses, whether it intends to regulate alkaline hydrolysis in its development of regulations under the Burial and Cremation (Scotland) Act 2016 and when it expects the outstanding regulations to be implemented.

I think, conversely, that what you are talking about is changing consumer behaviour. I would suggest that, when a consumer changes their behaviour to more green-friendly practices such as reuse and repair, they are more fastidious on their recycling as well. Therefore, even though I appreciate the argument, they are actually likely to recycle more. However, in terms of behaviour change, it is worthwhile analysis.

There is a big, Scotland-wide push around food waste because if we get our participation rates up that would certainly help. I think those aspects work in tandem. For example, the Scottish Government rolled out food waste collections at the same time as rolling out a campaign called “love food, hate waste” to get people to reduce the same food waste that it was beginning to trial collecting. Fife, and Perth and Kinross, did that back in 2005. I appreciate that the two aspects might appear to compete, but I think that they are complementary in boosting recycling rates. Also, in the context of my amendment 15, we are talking about a target of only 50 per cent. To give some idea of where we are, the national household recycling average is 43.4 per cent, so we are talking about a relatively small increase, compared with where we have come from.

I move amendment 15.

Will the minister take an intervention?

I am struggling to understand the minister’s position because, if we park amendment 17, my amendments represent the minister’s own targets. The Scottish Government has set those targets and done due diligence on them. All that my amendments would do is give the Government 12 years extra to meet its own targets. It would help if the committee could hear whether the Scottish Government did not know what it was doing when it set the targets or whether it has no confidence in meeting targets a decade or more after they were set.

The single amendment in this group is intended to ensure that each public body must take reasonable steps to prevent human rights harm and to ensure environmental due diligence with regard to the body’s operations, products and services, and, in particular, public procurement. I am aware that many public bodies will already be looking at their supply chains and procurement practices, but I feel that it is important to recognise that area and to ensure, via legislation, that every public body adheres to those standards. I hope that the committee believes that we have a responsibility to consider how we consume and procure and that it will therefore be in a position to support the amendment.

I move amendment 215.

I found that statement from the minister utterly bizarre. I am not sure what the Scottish Government’s policy is on the targets that it has set for itself. For the avoidance of doubt, having local authority targets does not preclude national targets being set. In fact, if we had what the Scottish Government previously said it would have, which is national targets, we might well want some local authority targets to be set, because they would help in meeting the national targets. The Scottish Government’s own targets, which presumably resulted from extensive detailed analysis, appear to have now been suddenly thrown in a big landfill bin, which is quite shocking.

The worry around all of this is that, if a local authority is looking at investment and making contracts, it will now find that its direction of travel—which has been very obvious as the recycling rate that local authorities are expected to make—is going to be the result of a negotiation process. Lots of local authorities that have invested significant amounts, such as Renfrewshire and Scottish Borders, could be left hung out to dry as a result of this new process. The uncertainty around it is quite shocking for local authorities across Scotland, because who knows what that negotiated outcome will be? Will there be a first-mover advantage for local authorities that have invested heavily, such as Aberdeenshire Council, or will councils that have taken their eye off the ball in terms of kerbside roll-outs get a big win because they will get extra funding now? I do not know. I do not think that anyone knows.

One thing that we do know is that it is incredibly unclear, and the Scottish Government seems to be disowning the targets that it has set. That is what we have established today.

Incineration capacity is going up and will continue to go up. Rather than being less reliant on burning waste, we are going to become more reliant on it. Although I welcome the ban on new incinerators entering the planning system, the reality is—it seems that Governments like to do this these days—that it was a ban on something that the market was never likely to deliver. We banned something that was unlikely to exist, because there are so many incinerators in the planning system already and there is overcapacity. I am not convinced that that will help the situation.

I go back to my earlier point. If local authorities have contracted incinerators—quite rightly, because they are entitled to do so—they could be hooked into those contracts for as long as 25 years in some cases. Therefore, it is really only the Government that could advise the committee on which local authority has signed which contract and what that means in terms of its recycling rates. I would support the Government doing that.

I am concerned about the likely increase in incineration and the effect that that could have on recycling rates. That said, it does not stop us meeting the 50 per cent target. We should not be concerned about the target in that context. It is a very easy target to meet, as the Scottish Government recognised when it said that it could meet it by 2013.

I think that that is enough from me, convener.